Two, speaking of good things, about things like pinboard: a vital second clause to requesting small payments for wanted/needed services is some sort of structure that prevents them from ever falling into the hands of AppGooSoft or any of their ilk.

At this point I don’t even consider paying for anything because it seems as soon as you do it’s been acquired by some corporation and turned into handcuffs. Some kind of bulletproof licensing such as Stallman has on GPL maybe. (I know. That’s why nobody uses it and takes more exploitable licenses instead, or ignores existing GPL with a “come up and sue me sometime.”)

Anyway, just some minor points that occurred to me while reading. I’m very sorry to hear that you were targeted for harassment! There’s a worthwhile field for thought experiments: how to shut down toxic trolls poisoning free speech for all of us without shutting down free speech. There has *got* to be something we can do.

]]>By: Kathyhttp://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2014/09/17/a-public-apology-on-screwing-up-by-not-questioning-assumptions-my-talk-at-bif10/comment-page-1/#comment-4178035
Wed, 17 Sep 2014 23:34:32 +0000http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=4958#comment-4178035Hi, Ethan — the second part of your essay brings to mind Lakoff’s contention that modern progressives and modern conservatives see the world through two very different frames: one has a “public” orientation and one has a (IMO perverted) “market” orientation where money is the only means used to determine what is “good.”

I don’t know if the root of our country’s “conservative” moral philosophy lies with Reaganomics or if its roots extend to the post-WWII era when we decided that we would become a “Christian Nation” (“in God we trust” on currency, one nation “under God” in the pledge of allegiance). Maybe it’s a predictable and natural response to FDR’s policies that helped us begin our recovery from the Great Depression.

But I am convinced that it is bad for democracy: 4-5 hours a day raising money and 3-4 hours “working” is not a sustainable model for democracy.

And don’t feel too bad about the popup ad … you know the history of disruptive innovation. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been a contemporary. :-)

The problem of funding news organizations is a fundamental one, however. We’ve not “paid” for civic news in the 20th century – we’ve paid for its delivery. Its cost has been subsidized by a plethora of other ventures: comics, classifieds, general ads, sports/fashion/home …